


Death Is Not For Us

by dandelionpower



Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2105)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Rough Sex, Spoilers, They do not have a healthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionpower/pseuds/dandelionpower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once in a lifetime, you meet someone and no matter how hard you try to avoid them, you’ll never succeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Is Not For Us

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to the wonderful Mosslover for the help and advice :)
> 
> And also thanks to MissLizzyann for the indirect inspiration

 

 

From the start, Vera had wanted to ignore those dark eyes wandering along the lines of her legs like birds of prey. She could feel that the man on the train, staring at her from his own seat, was no gentleman. Not in any sense of the word; not gentle, obviously. Maybe only the “man” applied in his case. He had chiselled features and the air of someone who didn’t care about sorting the good from the bad – winsome, but without any moral.

She could tell that he was amused by her unease. She was just as much a toy to him as was the cigarette tucked between his smirking lips.

Once in a lifetime, you meet someone and no matter how hard you try to avoid them, you’ll never succeed. You will get involved with them, one way or another. Deep down, the minute she saw that stranger, Vera knew that she was going to get involved with him. They had not even spoken yet and he was not a stranger anymore. At that time, she couldn’t suspect in how many twisted ways this involvement would happen.

Vera covered her legs in a haste to hide them from the man’s lustful and open stare. She stood to leave for another compartment, aware that the dark gaze was now boring into her back as she went down the train’s alley. Fate couldn’t be escaped, but she still had a strong survival instinct. Sadly, even that would not save her from Mr. Lombard. 

She would learn the stranger’s name later, on the harbour’s docks. At least now she had a last name to put on her future torments.

 

***

 

Unapologetic, cocksure, vainglorious; Lombard was an asshole. Vera could only agree. He was despicable in many ways.

She was uneasy when he was looking at her, but she soon found out she was even more uncomfortable when his eyes weren’t on her. She had grown addicted to his constant watchfulness. It didn’t give her the impression of being protected, however.  Nothing could. And there was nothing benevolent in the way he watched her. But in a strange way, despite the horrible situation in which they all were, he always seemed keen on “pleasing” her. He apologized for staring, even if he didn’t really mean it. He defended her against the others when they tried to pick on her or when they began to suspect she was involved in the gruesome murders happening in the house.

She hated the feeling that, little by little, leaving small crumbles of concern and respect on his path, he was drawing her closer… the more she tried to swim, the more she entangled herself in his net.

“I have an instinct about you,” Lombard had confided, one time when they were alone in the living room.  

She didn’t voice it at that time, but she also had an instinct about him. Despite being a self-avowed murderer of many, Lombard was probably the more lucid being on the cursed island. She had sensed it. Vera’s strong instincts also told her that whatever lie she could tell she couldn’t really hide her true self from him.     

Lombard was also crude and he took every opportunity to provoke her in the most arrogant and immodest way. Like that time he had blocked her way to her bedroom door with his arm, forcing her to stop in her tracks.

She had ordered him to leave her alone with a silent glare.

“You think I did not notice your wandering eyes?’ he had purred.

“And I yours? You are the one following me everywhere and cornering me in every corridor,” she accused him.

The remark only amused him. “A good hunter never takes his eyes from his quarry.”

“That’s what I am: your prey?” Vera hissed. “What tells me you are not coaxing me, only to be able to kill me easier later?”

Lombard had a little laugh and her eyes followed the enticing bobbing of his Adam apple in his throat. “Have you ever heard of “la petite mort”?” he asked, leaning slightly closer.

He had removed his arm from the space in front of her. She could have left. But she didn’t.

“My French is very basic I’m afraid,” Vera replied coldly.  

“It means “the little death”,‘ he explained. 

The young woman frowned, her heart suddenly speeding. Was he about to make a confession, to reveal a dark secret, or tell her he was already in the process of killing her? “What is it? A poison? A weapon?”  

“Oh you wicked, suspicious gal,” Lombard smiled with a fond spark at the bottom of the murky water wells of his pupils. “It’s not a poison,” he reassured her, leaning even closer to whisper in her ear: “The “petite mort” is what a woman feels when she has a man between her legs who knows what he is doing and she gets so much pleasure she feels like she is dying a little.”

She opened her mouth to reply but closed it right away like a beached fish. She could only be scandalized by his boldness and absence of any decency.  

“Are you a virgin, Miss Claythorne, or is the "Miss" just another kind of pretty disguise?” he inquired.

She slapped him across the face; hard.

His satisfied expression and the way he touched his cheek told her that it was exactly the reaction he was going for.

“You're a disgusting man,” she spat.

He chuckled. “I am,” he admitted. “And yet you want me,” he added tilting his head to the side.  “You think I don't know who you really are? You play the Miss Goody-two-shoes, but you are not that much of a good girl, aren't you? Nobody here is a saint, but you might just be the worst - a demon clad in an angel’s gown.”

Vera was fuming. All she wanted was to tear up that handsome, smug face; to bite those beautiful, manly lips until they would bleed and make sure they’d shut up for all eternity.

“I won't let you insult me any longer,” she snapped, pushing him away and storming inside her bedroom. She promptly closed the door and rested her back against it. But Lombard was still on the other side, and she could hear his voice like he was still whispering in her ear. “What insult? It was a compliment. Good, virtuous girls are uninteresting to me.”

 

***

 

Lombard’s gun was missing. Every room was searched. Vera fumbled through his drawers but something told him the gun would not be there. He, on the other side, was very much there, and he wanted her to know it. He stood in the doorframe, the brown eyes monitoring her every move, not missing a heartbeat or a breath. He was the one being half naked, only wearing a white towel around his hips, but Vera was the one in the room feeling undressed. 

Later, he had found her waiting for her own room to be searched. He walked up to her from the other end of the corridor, attracted like a magnet to a knife blade. The tension was crisp and cracking in the space between them when he stopped in front of her. As a bait, he displayed his ripped body for her eyes to feast on. This time, she didn’t try to avert her eyes or pretend she was pure from lewd thoughts.

The skin of his stomach was burning hot. She didn’t have to touch to know it. From where she stood she could smell his scent – spicy; heavy and wet like the African jungle. 

She undid the belt of her bathrobe and gave him a glimpse of the red bathing suit she was wearing underneath. It was like throwing a piece of meat to a wolf, hoping it would be enough to sate it. But this one was voracious and she had just made the hunger grow more urgent.

“Well, well, well, Miss Claythorne,” he breathed, in a deep, throaty murmur that made her shiver.

“Vera,” she murmured back.

“Philip.”

His name sounded too soft for a rough man like him. 

 

***

_Five Little Soldier Boys going in for law one got in Chancery and then there were four._

 

Judge Wargrave was dead. There were only four little soldier boys on the island – Vera, Blore, Armstrong and … Phillip. He was still there, always around her. He had been the first one to come to her rescue when she had screamed and passed out – attacked by the ghosts of her less than glorious past. He was the first by her side, rubbing her back, calling her name and trying to revive her. He had congratulated her for her prudence when she had refused to drink from the glass Blore handed to her.

Any of them could be the next one to die. They were in that incredible, elated state that was only given by the sentiment of having nothing to lose anymore. They drank and snorted the cocaine found through Anthony Marston’s things.

The noose had tightened so much around the survivors that it had inevitably brought Vera into Philip’s arms. She pretended to be drunker than she really was, but it didn’t prevent her from resting her head against his strong shoulder as they danced. She wondered why she was even there, but did not want to be elsewhere. His heartbeat and his breath on her forehead as he kissed her there was the only thing keeping her on the frail brink of sanity. Philip never seemed to suspect her from being the evil mastermind who had planned to kill them one by one. He trusted her and that made her feel oddly safe.        

“You stick with me, Vera,” his firm voice had enjoined her as he nuzzled her hair. “We are going to get through this. I have no intention to get killed. Death is for other people, not for us.”

She did not reply. Her grip tightened around him, anchoring her to his body as her fingernails dug into his back muscles. Did they really have a chance? Was there really something as “us”? Why would he want her for an ally? Perhaps he had only recognized in her a soul as black as his.

 

 

***

Vera left her door unlocked as a clear invitation. It finally opened without a creaking. Philip found her seated on the bed, waiting for him like a condemned prisonner for the execution. 

She realized he was always meant to have her. He had come to her room to take her and he would not leave before getting what he was looking for. There was no point trying to avoid the inevitable. This was their last chance to satisfy that irrational lust. They would not get another opportunity. Tomorrow, they wouldn’t be there anymore, at least not the two of them together.

She went to the door and locked it after him. Before she could even look at him properly, he had already pinned her to the wooden surface and caught her bottom lip between his teeth with a low groan. He placed his hand on the nape of her neck to keep her still as he kept on exploring her mouth with a pressing tongue.

He pulled back slightly, his eyes shining with a dangerous craving. “You only have to say a word, Vera, and I’m gone.”

She said nothing: only kept looking down at the mouth that had left hers too soon.

 “That's what I thought...” he smirked. 

The mouth and teeth were back on her, biting and kissing her neck. His large hands grabbed her thigh, pushing her up against the door. She did not want more foreplay; no pretend tenderness. She wanted him inside: raw and shameless.

She helped him shrug off his shirt and let her nails sink into his shoulders’ flesh even more viciously than during their dance. This dance was one of another sort.  It was the frantic waltz of Eros and Thanatos – the lust and the death.

She unbuckled his belt, he ripped apart her underwear and with his hand pressed to the small of her back, he pushed inside her like a desperate man, throwing his head back with a groan. Vera gasped for air. Her hands left his shoulders to find his hips and she grabbed them, silently begging him to move. Their current position made it difficult so he carried her to the bed. He shed the rest of his clothes and she cried out in relief when he was finally back inside her.

“Shhh” he ordered, putting his hand over her mouth to silence her whimpers. It was better for them if the others didn’t know what they were up to.

She bit the palm of his hand. He let out a yelp of surprise and pain, but did not remove his hand. Vera presser her tongue over the inside of his hand, hoping he could forgive her.  Instead, he took her right leg with his free hand and pushed it up, forcing her to tilt her pelvis forward as he penetrated her even deeper. He plunged relentlessly inside her, again and again, with skilled and angry thrusts of hips.  

The pleasure was cold like a frostbite, the sensation precise and sharp – a scalpel blade through her skin. In the realm of the living, they were already strangers in a stranger land: tourists having a last bite of the local delicacies before leaving.

His sweaty skin stuck to her dry one. Vera felt like an equilibrist, blindfolded, walking on a rope over the void. She would not trust him with her life – she didn’t trust him at all, but she still let him see her at her most vulnerable. She let him touch and possess her naked, unprotected legs and sex. 

He was so strong – too strong. She could feel every trained muscles of his stomach and chest contract with every push. He could easily kill her right now. The lips on her throat could well be replaced by a hand, by cruel fingers, by a grip applying pressure until she couldn’t breathe anymore.  But if Philip wanted to kill her tonight, he would probably already have.

Philip freed her mouth and sat on his heels. He grabbed her backside, prompting her to arch her back from the bed and meet his pounding. She bit her lower lips until she drew blood as she moaned, unrestrained, between her teeth.

One of Philip’s hands sneaked away from her back and went between her thighs. His finger pressed her clitoris, pulling the trigger. Her eyes shot wide open and so did her mouth, in a loud exclamation of agony. She now knew how it felt to die, even just a little.  

 

***

They did not speak afterward. Philip only took off the remaining pieces of clothing she was still wearing. He spent a long time running his hand across her shoulders, up and down her back as she lay on her stomach, immobile and staring blankly into space like a corpse. It took her nearly half an hour to even notice when he stopped. His large, heavy hand now rested, motionless on her lower back.  When she finally turned around, she found him asleep. His face looked younger than it ever did. She realized she didn’t even know how old he was. She did not want to know. Neither of them deserved grace, or love, or forgiveness. It was all they would ever be good at: scratching each other’s skin like cats and fight to survive.

 _“Wake not the sleeping lion,”_ she couldn’t help thinking as she brushed his chest carefully with her fingertips.

It was quite careless of him to allow himself to fall asleep in her bed like that. She could do whatever she wanted to him now. If she had the gun, she could shot him right between the eyes. She could stick a knife into his heart. That wasn’t her intention at all, but somehow, she already knew that his blind trust in her would be the death of Philip Lombard.


End file.
